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Washington, Jun 18: US Defence officials are concerned over China's use of COVID-19 situation to gain stakes in strategically important companies of United States as the impact of novel coronavirus has left several companies in dire need of capital.

Amid the pandemic, it getting hard for the defence department to keep an eye on national security and help protect smaller companies down the chain, CNN reported.

"We are paying close attention to any indicators that China is leveraging Covid-19 to take advantage of a situation where defence companies need capital more than ever," a defence official told CNN.

In April, Ellen Lord, undersecretary of defence for acquisition and sustainment said it is paying close attention to 'adversaries' against the 'economic warfare' with the United States.

"We have to be very, very careful about the focused efforts some of our adversaries have to really undergo sort of economic warfare with us, which has been going on for some time," Ellen Lord, undersecretary of defence for acquisition and sustainment was quoted as saying by CNN.

US Committee on Foreign Investment protects its interest against hostile countries gaining ownership in strategically important companies. But the pandemic is changing the definition of national security concerns to include drugs, protective gear and medical supplies.

"These are now national security needs and we probably should have been thinking about it a long time ago in terms of biowarfare that we should have a trusted industrial base or a set of trusted allies -- the UK, or NATO allies or Japan or Korea -- who are trusted in that regard," Bill Greenwalt, a former Pentagon official.

Give the threat posed by foreign acquisition, Pentagon has been offering tools to help small US businesses defend themselves against adversarial investment and conducting background checks with other government agencies to ensure transparency.

US President Donald Trump's trade adviser Peter Navarro recently told CNN if Trump wins reelection, Washington DC will likely take offshore supply chains as national security priorities.

"If we fail to do that in the face of this crisis, we will have failed this country and all future generations of Americans," Navarro said.

The US State Department has also warned US allies to "avoid economic overreliance on China" and "guard their critical infrastructure" from China's influence.

Chad P Bown, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, pointed to recent China's economic coercion of Australia on the political matter saying, "this is how China operates and everybody knows it."

Wuhan, Feb 16: The death toll from China's coronavirus epidemic has climbed to 1,665 after 142 more people died, mostly in the worst-hit Hubei Province, and the confirmed cases jumped to 68,500, officials said on Sunday, as top WHO experts scramble to assist Beijing contain the virus spread.

China's National Health Commission confirmed 2,009 new cases across the country.

Hubei and its provincial capital Wuhan, where the virus first emerged in December, reported 1,843 of the new cases. The latest report brought the total confirmed cases in Hubei to 56,249 cases.

Of the new deaths, 139 were in Hubei, two in Sichuan, and one in Hunan, the state-run Xinhua news agency reported.

The number of new cases, however, appears to have started dropping and a top Chinese health official has said efforts to control the outbreak have reached the “most crucial stage".

The report said 9,419 infected patients had been discharged from hospital after recovery so far.

The coronavirus has posed a severe threat to the medical staff as more than 1,700 Chinese health officials have been infected by the virus while treating the patients and six of them have died.

Experts from the World Health Organisation are expected in Beijing on Sunday to join Chinese health authorities in containing the virus, which has spread to several other countries forcing them to temporarily stop tourist arrivals from China.

The health commission said a joint mission with WHO experts will pay field visits to China's three provincial-level regions to learn the effectiveness of the epidemic control measures.

One task of the mission will be to come up with standard medicine to cure the disease, according to the health commission.

Several antiviral drugs are under clinical trials and Chinese researchers have narrowed down their focus to a few existing drugs, including Chloroquine Phosphate, Favipiravir and Remdesivir, said Zhang Xinmin, director of the China National Centre for Biotechnology Development.

Experts have asked people to frequently wash hands and face, and wear masks.

Authorities have begun quarantining large quantity of bank notes and coins in the affected areas and sanitising them with UV light before releasing them back into circulation to stop the virus from spreading.

Islamabad/Dhaka, May 25: The coronavirus pandemic and lockdowns coupled with travel restrictions and social distancing norms have muted the Eid celebrations in Pakistan and Bangladesh as worshippers in the two Muslim-majority countries marked the end of Ramzan in strictly-regulated prayer congregations.

A large number of people in the two countries were forced to stay indoors on the occasion of Eid al-Fitr, marking the end of the fasting month of Ramzan, due to the fears of contracting the novel coronavirus which has killed nearly 3.5 lakh people and infected over 5.4 million across the world.

In Pakistan, the government has issued strict instructions to observe social distancing while offering Eid prayers and asked people to avoid visiting relatives and hosting parties.

As the railways remained closed, many people could not travel to their hometowns for the most important festival.

Eid congregations were held at open places, mosques and Eidgahs in all major cities and towns while following strict standard operating procedures (SOPs) of social distancing and other precautionary measures. But in some areas, the people did not adhere to the SOPs and were seen thronging to their favourite shops to celebrate Eid.

Pakistan Prime Minister's Special Assistant on Health Zafar Mirza on Friday said the deadly infection would continue to multiply if precautions are not taken.

Earlier this month, the government announced the lifting of the countrywide lockdown imposed to curb the spread of the COVID-19 in phases, even as infections continued to rise in the country.

Pakistan's coronavirus cases on Monday reached 56,349 with 1,748 new patients while the death toll climbed to 1,167 after 34 people lost their lives in the last 24 hours.

The trajectory showed that the number was steadily going up with authorities fearing a rise in cases in the wake of the easing of lockdown before Eid.

But Prime Minister Imran Khan cited the economic havoc the virus restrictions had wreaked on citizens as the reason behind the decision to ease the restrictions.

He urged Pakistanis to forgo the traditional Eid festivity in view of the hundreds of fatalities caused by the coronavirus and the lives lost in Friday's plane crash in Karachi.

Ninety-seven people, including nine children, were killed and two passengers miraculously survived a fiery crash when a Pakistan International Airlines plane with 99 travellers on board plunged into a densely populated residential area near the Jinnah International Airport.

Most of the victims were travelling home to celebrate Eid.

In Bangladesh, millions of Muslims joined the strictly-regulated prayer congregations across the country.

Thousands of worshippers attended the prayer services at the Baitul Mukarram National Mosque in Dhaka while following the health and social distancing protocols to limit the spread of the coronavirus, bdnews24.com reported.

Despite the government directive for children and senior citizens not to participate in Eid prayers, many children and people aged over 60 attended the Eid prayers. Although social distancing rules were maintained to a large extent, people were seen flouting the norms, the report said.

As per the government order, no Eid congregation will be held in an open space, but people can perform the Eid prayers in mosques. However, everyone coming to the mosques for prayer must wear a mask, follow social distancing and other hygiene rules, said Islamic Foundation Secretary Kazi Nurul Islam.

On Sunday, Bangladesh reported 28 new fatalities, the highest single-day increase, bringing the death toll to 480.

The number of coronavirus cases in the country rose to 33,610 after 1,532 people tested positive on Sunday.